Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

This textbook first appeared in 2000 and has since become the standard learning manual for those interested in the classical form of ancient Egyptian, usually referred to as Middle Egyptian. Egyptian is a separate branch of the wider Afro-Asiatic family and is conventionally divided into several periods: Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, and Late Egyptian, including Demotic and Coptic (the language of Christian Egypt). While it has been extinct for approximately half a millennium, extensive written records in Egyptian are available from around 3,000 BCE and to the last documents written in Coptic in the eleventh century CE, although Coptic is reported to have continued to be spoken into the seventeenth century CE. The language and writing system described and taught in this book continued to be extensively used, especially in monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions, until the end of ancient Egyptian civilization and its replacement by Christian culture. Middle Egyptian continued to be in use long after spoken Egyptian had changed. In this way, its use is analogous to the use of Latin in Romance-speaking areas of the former Roman Empire for centuries after the end of the empire.

This manual is more extensive than a mere ‘introduction.’ It is for the serious beginner student of Egyptology and may also be useful to linguists who want to acquire some knowledge of the structure of ancient Egyptian and its complex hieroglyphic writing system, one of three used by the ancient Egyptians. The textbook is divided into twenty-six lessons. The first three lessons consist of a short overview of the language, its history, and its genetic affiliation. The phonology of the language is discussed in detail, and the initial part of the book gives a thorough treatment of the hieroglyphic system of writing used in Middle Egyptian.

The grammar portion begins in Lesson 4, with nouns, followed by lessons on pronouns, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs, numbers, and non-verbal sentences. Verbs are introduced in Lesson 13, and the subsequent nine lessons deal with the tense-aspect-mood (TAM) forms of the language. Lesson 23 covers participles, and the following two lessons cover relative constructions and their usage. The final lesson presents a summary of the grammar and a comparative discussion of the three main theories of Egyptian grammar that have been developed over the years by scholars since the decipherment of the hieroglyphic writing system in the early nineteenth century. The author uses what he calls the ‘current theory’. This comparison is useful for those who want to look to older linguistic descriptions of the language, such as Sir Alan Gardiner’s grammar. The book concludes with extensive lists of hieroglyphic signs, organized first by representational form and then by sign shape, a short glossary, a key to the exercises, and a detailed index.

All of the examples given in the text appear in hieroglyphs, transcription, and English translation. Since the book is also an introduction to the ‘culture of hieroglyphs’, each but the final lesson contains a short essay on ancient Egyptian history, society, or culture. This textbook is probably the best, and certainly the most detailed, manual for Middle Egyptian available in English. It is an exhaustive survey of the language and culture of ancient Egypt and is destined to remain the standard textbook in English on the language for a long time to come.